


Part Of Your World

by neoqueentitania



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Kinda?, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25650097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoqueentitania/pseuds/neoqueentitania
Summary: Kazuto thinks his time working at the aquarium is doomed to be nothing more than cleaning and feeling sorry for himself. That is, until he meets Eugeo, who turns his life  upside down and shows him a world he never dreamed of belonging to before.But will he ever belong in Eugeo’s world?
Relationships: Eugeo/Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito, Kirigaya Kazuto | Kirito & Yuuki Asuna | Asuna
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m on my mermaid bs again lord help me

Long shifts, screaming children and insufferable lighting. Ah, the perks of working in an aquarium. It was a magical place for the children, who could marvel at different fish and the various kid-oriented attractions the aquarium boasted, but for the workers it was quite possibly hell on earth. Well, it was for one of them.

Kazuto sighed, dragging the mop and bucket behind him. The water splashed over the side of the bucket, landing onto the cold concrete floor. He didn’t care enough to mop it up, it would evaporate before anyone could slip in it, and it wasn’t like little kids were running around after hours in the employees only area.

Though, there was that one little girl who had been a little too inquisitive about what the tanks looked like. She had apparently walked into two separate staff only areas before her parents had found her again. 

Better safe than sorry. Kazuto mopped the pubble up, sighing as he did so. Why did everyone else get to play with dolphins or put on shows for little kids, but he had to be stuck cleaning floors and… bathrooms.

He dropped the cleaning supplies back against the wall of the supply closet in their designated spot, throwing a pair of rubber gloves next to the bucket and briefly sniffing his fingertips, then gagging at the chemical scent. No matter what, he always managed to finish the day smelling of chlorine and no less than three different cleaning products. It was getting ridiculous.

“I hate this stupid job,” he mumbled to himself as he tugged at his lanyard. It was where he had the keys to the storage room, employees only area and supply closet, though his boss was usually okay with the doors being unlocked during the day. Maybe that was part of the reason kids kept getting in places they shouldn’t have.

“Why don’t you just quit?” 

A voice came from above him and for a brief moment Kazuto convinced himself that he had inhaled so many chemical fumes he had heard the voice of God. That - not entirely rational - thought was quickly squashed when he looked up, seeing a man casually leaning over the top of the large tank.

The tank was, from this side, a mess of wires and tubes, tall glass panes stretching almost to the ridiculously tall ceiling, with maybe eight feet between the top of the tank and the top of the room. Kazuto has to squint to see the man at all, partially because of the height of the tank and partially because of the chlorine that had somehow found its way into his eyes.

When he did see him, though, he was glad he did. His wet, short blond hair stuck to his forehead, face slightly flushed with water droplets falling into the water he was relaxing in. He had green eyes, from what Kazuto could tell, but he was squinting so it was hard to see.

However, his most striking feature was the electric blue tail that started at his waist and extended down where his legs would have been, flowing to a big blue fin. 

“Who are you?” Kazuto called, walking over to the side of the tank.

“Eugeo! I’m one of the performers. What about you?”

“Kazuto, I just started last week, I do some of the cleaning and stuff,”

“A week in and you already wanna quit?” Eugeo almost laughed. Maybe he did and Kazuto just didn’t hear it.

“If you had to clean these bathrooms you’d wanna quit too,” Kazuto deadpanned, cringing at the thought of it.

“Yikes,”

Kazuto kept staring up as Eugeo pushed away from the side of the tank, swimming down to the bottom of the tank. He waved to Kazuto quickly, then spun around, causing a flurry of bubbles to float up through the water, some getting stuck against the glass. He reached his hand down to the sand at the bottom of the tank and dug around for a moment before he pulled out a long, clear tube. 

Kazuto recognised it instantly - one of the tubes from the outside of the tank, the one his manager had told him to never unplug. On the outside end of the tube was a tank of oxygen, the end in the tank had a small mouthpiece that Eugeo brought to his lips. He took a breath in, then swam up to the top of the tank again, tube still in hand.

“Hey, Kazuto, can you clean this for us please? It’s all sandy and there’s some stones in there. It’s a real pain trying to spit rocks out of your mouth every five minutes,”

Kazuto made a mental note to clean it first thing the next morning. He’d never realised the tube had an actual use before, he had assumed it was part of a filter to keep the tank clean. In hindsight, the four filters he already knew about were probably more than enough, and something to keep people from drowning was probably important too.

“You breathe out of that?”

“Sometimes,” Eugeo shrugged, “I can hold my breath for seven minutes so I hardly use it. It’s mostly a safety precaution, y’know, just so I don’t die,”

“Of course, we wouldn’t want that. The kids would be devastated,” Kazuto wipes his hand print from the glass with his shirt sleeve.

The pair went quiet and Kazuto made his way to the storage room to sort boxes of tacky decorations. They’d had a birthday party that afternoon and it was a nightmare to clean up after.

By the time he was finished, Eugeo was out of the tank and significantly more human-looking, his tail lying wrapped in a small collection of towels on the floor. At least it wasn’t getting the floor wet.

Kazuto watched him in curiosity as he dried his hair off with yet another towel, then pulled on a blue t-shirt, ironically, almost the same color as the tail had been, a pair of jeans and some white converse shoes.

“Have a good night, man,” Eugeo smiled as he walked out the back door, “I hope I get to see you tomorrow,”

“Same to you,” Kazuto nodded casually, picking up the tail and carrying it to the locker it was kept in. The locker next to it had another tail, a deep blue and gold one that was worn by a different performer, Kazuto vaguely remembered hearing the name Alice on his first day.

He patted the tail dry, then tossed the towels in the laundry hamper by the lockers. Laundry duty wasn’t in his paycheck, therefore, it wasn’t something he’d waste his time with. The last thing he did was turn off the light to the building and walk out the door to his car.

His phone was buzzing with texts from his roommate, Asuna, telling him she’d made dinner and left him some on the table for when he got home. He smiled at his phone, she really was too good to him. He’d have to do something nice for her, too. Maybe he could try his hand at lunch?

‘Sounds great, I’m leaving now, don’t start movie night without me,’ 

He was suddenly in the mood to watch The Little Mermaid - and he decided that the next day he would watch a certain merman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuto watches Eugeo (and Alice) at work and is in awe of how wonderful it is. Then Eugeo makes an offer to get to know his workmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My motivation to write? Re-found. My mermaid phase? Happening again. My love for yujikiri? Endless. Hotel? Trivago.

The cold water tingled against Eugeo’s abs as he sunk into the water, his heart beating like a drum in his chest, eyes stinging from the chemicals. Everything sent a rush of adrenaline coursing through his body, his entire being reacting to being in the water again. Days away from work were far too long, though most would disagree. He loved his job, what else could he say?

He swam around the tank, picking up a fallen coral decoration and setting it straight - he’d bumped it getting out of the pool the evening before and had decided it was too cold to go back and fix it then.

The water was unusually cold that morning, the heater hadn’t been on when he’d arrived and it took a while to heat up the tank. Usually, all the heaters and pumps were either left on or turned on by staff who arrived earlier than Eugeo did, but the staff member in charge was running late that morning, he supposed.

He played in the water for a while before he surfaced, taking in a gulp of air and leaning back to float around on his back, letting the water carry the weight of the heavy silicon tail he wore. It was gorgeous, sure, but it was a dreadful weight to carry when he could really only use his arms to keep himself mobile.

“Eugeo! Are you here?” A voice hollered from somewhere above him.

He smiled, “Alice! You’re late, is everything okay at home?”

He felt a splash next to him and turned around so he could face the source of the noise.

Swimming beside him was a young woman by the name of Alice. She’d started working at the aquarium a year before Eugeo had and had earned a reputation as a dedicated worker, but fatally stubborn. She often refused to use her air supply while performing, which had resulted in two separate occasions where paramedics had been called into the aquarium. She had been fine both times, only shocked and in need of rest, but staff constantly told her she was pushing her luck.

“Everything’s fine, I’m not even late. You’re twenty minutes early,” the blonde stared at him quizically, “Excited to be here today or something?”

“Something like that…” Eugeo mumbled before he dived beneath the surface of the water again.

Truthfully he was excited at the thought of seeing Kazuto again. He’d seen him walk past his tank once or twice, but had never had the opportunity to speak to him until the night before. He always looked so down, like he was bored of life itself, and Eugeo hoped he could make him even a little excited at the thought of coming into work.

If he showed up, that is.

Alice swam down to the bottom of her tank, her tail shimmering under the fluorescent lights. It was a deep blue colour, a little darker than Eugeo’s, with gold fins on the side and several gold scales dotted around at various places. She’d custom-designed it a few weeks before she’d started working as a mermaid professionally and had worn it to every performance since.

Though, Eugeo guessed she didn’t have much of a choice. When you worked for a company or an organisation that hosted mermaid performers, there was usually a request to keep the same tail. Kids asked questions, inquisitive as small children can be, and it wasn’t uncommon for different tails to spark comment and questions performers weren’t fast enough to answer before their little minds connected the two dots.

Apparently Alice had ruined a child’s birthday party that way. A little boy had asked why she wasn’t in the tail she’d had at the aquarium, and before she could come up with a sufficient explanation, he’d already guessed the tail was fake. 

Thankfully, Eugeo rarely worked freelance gigs. The only time he performed outside of the aquarium was for a little girl’s birthday party after her aunt had called in the morning of, apologising profusely for the short notice and explaining that the girl’s mother had planned a fairy party, but it had been cancelled after the company shut down and they had only been given a few days’ notice to change their plans.

Eugeo had agreed to the birthday party free of charge and it had gone off without a hitch. The girl was an absolute sweetheart and had been very interested in touching Eugeo’s tail, giggling as he gently splashed her with water. The usual questions had followed - did he get to choose his own tail colour, was blue his favourite colour, was he born a mermaid or was he made one. Eugeo always had answers for all of them.

She had asked if he was friends with any fairies, to which Eugeo had replied he knew tonnes of them. The girl had clapped her hands together and asked if he’d ever met Titania, then explained that she was her favourite fairy and she often came to visit her when she was really sad.

He’d never managed to ask what that had been about before the party had ended and he’d had to go home. He often wondered if he’d ever get his answer.

“I’m sorry I’m late!”

Eugeo practically leapt out of the water, leaning over the side of the tank with a huge grin as he watched Kazuto while he rushed through the doors. His hair was messy and he practically tripped over his own feet as he dropped his bag to the ground and hurried to the side of the tank.

“Late night?” Eugeo asked.

“Yeah,” Kazuo sighed, getting on his knees to clean the oxygen tank’s tube.

Alice threw the tube over the side of the tank, narrowly avoiding hitting Kazuto on the head, “Hey, newbie, ever heard of saying hello?” 

“Ah, hey!” Kazuto waved quickly, then focused back on his cleaning, “You must be Alice, right? I’m Kazuto, nice to meet you,”

“Nice to meet you too. How long have you worked here for?”

Kazuto counted on his fingers, “Two weeks. You?”

“Two years,” Alice told him, “I’m basically the expert on how everything goes here, so if you have any questions, just ask me,”

“Or, you can talk to me, if you wanted to,” Eugeo suggested shyly, then ducked back down underwater. Alice rolled her eyes and followed him under, flipping her tail, leaving a trail of bubbles behind her.

Eugeo swam to the side of the tank and sat on a large, flat rock by the glass, watching Kazuto working. His hands fiddled with the tank, all of its confusing pieces working like clockwork under his fingers. It was actually quite entertaining for Eugeo to watch - which was impressive considering he spent his days next to a mermaid while he was being a merman himself.

“Are you okay there?” Kazuto asked, laughing once he noticed the blond’s fixated gaze.

Eugeo would have blushed if the water and lights didn’t hide it, giving an embarrassed thumbs-up before pushing off the rock and swimming to the other side of the tank to help Alice clean their handprints from the glass. 

Everything went just as it usually did early mornings in the aquarium. Things were cleaned and fixed, performers donned their costumes and employees snuck off to where they wouldn’t be seen before guests arrived. For Kazuto, that meant sitting on the platform at the top of the mermaid tank to watch the pair swim around and play with children who came to see them.

Alice was more of a hit with the girls, blowing them bubble-filled kissed through the water and pressing their hands together through the glass. Every girl watched her intently, waving and clapping at her as she moved through the water, long blonde hair flowing behind her.

Eugeo had less attention, but a smaller group of children - maybe four or five - came up to the side of the tank he was lazing in, tapping on the glass to get his attention. He immediately grinned and swam over to them, waving excitedly and reaching out to press their hands together. One little girl stuck her tongue out at him, he responded in kind, pushing out a few stray bubbles as he did so, which made the children laugh.

He pushed away from the glass, doing a flip in the water and causing a swirl of bubbles to cover him. The bubbles stuck to his tail, his face, the ends of his hair. A few stuck to the side of the tank, which he cleared with his hand as he swam back over to the group.

“What’s your name please, Mister Mermaid sir?” 

Eugeo swam over to the bottom of the tank, pointing to a sign in front of the glass. It was a simple white sign, with a picture of Eugeo smiling happily in his tail, with “Eugeo” written in big, fancy letters.

“Eugeo?” The girl asked, making Eugeo nod his head happily, “Eugeo! Hello Eugeo!”

The merman waved happily, spinning around and twirling through the water playfully. A young boy clapped his hands, begging Eugeo to do another trick. He bent down as much as his tail would allow, then blew air bubble rings in the water, aiming them at each other the kids that surrounded him.

This intrigued all the young audience, who all crowded around Eugeo, giving Alice a chance to surface and get air. She took a huge breath, almost panting. Kazuto handed her the breathing tube and she happily accepted it, taking a few aided breaths before she handed it back.

“You good?” Kazuto asked.

“Yeah, I just got a little over-ambitious,” Alice told him, then looked down at Eugeo, “He’s amazing, isn’t he?”

Kazuto nodded, “He’s a natural with kids, it’s really cute. They all love him,”

“He’s one of the best people for the job,” Alice agreed, “I’ve never seen someone click with kids the way he does. Can you blame them for loving him? Look at him, he’s cute, he makes them laugh, he can do more tricks than I can,”

“You’d think the guy was born with gills himself, wouldn’t you?” Kazuto marvelled.

Before the conversation could continue, Eugeo looked up to the top of the tank and blew a quick bubble ring, his cue that he needed air. Alice dropped herself back into the tank and waved to the young group, encouraging them all to come back over to her so Eugeo could take a break. He didn’t push himself as far as she did, but when he needed breaks he needed long ones.

“How’d I do?” He asked once he surfaced, taking a breath and looking up at Kazuto. His hair stuck to his forehead and his emerald green eyes were stained a red hue with chlorine. His breaths came in short, quick instances for a few moments, his chest rising and falling with every breath. His chest with two subtle scars running under his pecs.

“You did really amazing, the kids love you!” Kazuto offered him the breathing tube but he refused.

“They’re precious,” Eugeo gushed, “Did you see them waving at me? Oh - them reading my name was adorable! They love getting to know the mermaids- well, mermaid and merman. When we have dry events we always tell them that if they’re in the ocean they can call our names and we’ll hear them and know that they’re thinking of us. Sometimes we get letters of kids that do- I’m rambling, I’m so sorry!”

Kazuto laughed and shook his head, “It’s fine! You can ramble all you want, just don’t lose that breath of yours. We wouldn’t want to have a dead merman floating around in front of all these kids, now would we?”

Eugeo stuck his tongue out at him, laughing quietly. 

“Alice is great with them too, though, look!” He pointed at the mermaid, who was making bubble hearts and twirling around for the kids that crowded around the glass, all trying to watch her dancing.

“She is, you both are,” Kazuto commented, “I could never do something like this, kids just aren’t my style,”

“You don’t have any young siblings?” Eugeo asked curiously.

“I have a sister who’s a couple of years younger than me, she was gonna intern here this year but she got a scholarship to her dream university, so she took that offer instead,”

“Congratulations to her,” 

“Yeah, we’re really proud of her,” Kazuto smiled.

Eugeo took a deep breath and dived back underwater, waving and spinning around as he went lower. Once he reached the bottom, he placed his hand against the glass just in front of a young boy, a little away from the larger group. He smiled and put his hand there too, and Eugeo gave him a cheerful grin, drawing a smiley face against the tank glass. The boy drew a love heart back, then blew a kiss to Eugeo, who returned it, blowing bubbles as he did.

The boy’s mother smiled and took her son’s hand, telling him they could come back later, and led him away. Eugeo waved goodbye, then moved on to the next lonely child. That was his routine, and it’s how he spent the rest of his shift.

At the end of his shift, when the area was closed to visitors, Eugeo pulled himself out of the tank, sighing and shaking the water from his hair.

“Good swim?” Alice asked as she climbed out of the tank for herself.

“Yeah, but now my feet are killing me,” he complained. Light-heartedly, of course. He adored his job, he would take being in pain from a tail over a boring office job any day.

The two pulled their tails off, a difficult task, then walked to their lockers, both dripping wet and starting to shiver.

“If you want, you can come to my house tonight. I can make dinner and you can relax your feet,” Alice offered, packing her things away into her locker.

“That sounds good,” Eugeo wrapped his tail in some towels, making sure no water could drip on the floor. He’d hate to give Kazuto more work.

The raven-haired man in question walked past him at that moment, taking both tails and getting ready to move them to their shelves. 

“Oh, hey, Kazuto!” Eugeo smiled, “Do you have any plans tonight?”

Kazuto thought for a moment, checking the calendar app on his phone.

“No, I don’t think so, why?”

“Alice and I were just having a lazy night at her house and we- I… I was wondering if you’d want to join us?”

Kazuto gave a confused look between the both of them. Eugeo was blushing just slightly and Alice seemed to be indifferent to the suggestion. 

“Uh, sure,” Kazuto shrugged, “I need to go home change because my uniform smells like fish crap, but that sounds fun! Can you text me the address? Here, I’ll put my number in your phone,”

Eugeo and Alice both handed their phones over - Alice a little more apprehensively - and Kazuto added himself to their contacts. He double-checked his number, then handed their phones back.

“Okay, here’s the address,” Alice told him, then sent him a quick text. 

“Cool, thanks,” Kazuto read it once, nodded, then put his phone in his pants pocket. “What time should I be there?”

“Seven?” Eugeo suggested, “We can have dinner and watch a movie or something,”

“Seven sounds good! I’ll see you guys then!”

Kazuto carried the tails away and Eugeo and Alice made their way to the car park. 

“You just invited a random guy to my house? Seriously?” 

“But he seems really nice and I’d like to get to know him more,” Eugeo jingled his car keys in his hands.

“Ah, I see,” Alice smirked, “You’re crushing on him!”

“No, no, I’m not crushing on him!” Eugeo blushed, “I just want to get to know my work colleague better,”

“By making out with him?” Alice teased as she opened her car door.

“No!” Eugeo cried.

Alice laughed and climbed into her car and Eugeo did the same, blushing furiously. He gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly, face burning red and heartbeat loudly drumming away. 

Making out with Kazuto? Was that really what Alice expected him to do tonight? Did she really think that was his end goal of getting to know him? Of course it wasn’t.

At least, not yet it wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am an Australian I’m sorry for calling it a car park. It’s where you park your car. A car park. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Short first chapter as per the usual. Thank you for reading!! Please kudos/comment/share :) <3


End file.
